The Focus: Regional services exist, but they aren’t efficiently shared or marketed. Participants noted a regional habit: “if you need one, we give three,” meaning multiple organizations often duplicate the same efforts while other needs go unmet.

Deep Dive: The group discussed utilizing libraries as community capstones for information distribution and considered the radical idea of sharing staff across agencies to manage heavy workloads.

Decided Action: Create a Shared Community Connections Coordinator specifically for human services across the Chippewa Valley and build a modern, centralized database to prevent service overlaps.

The Focus: A competitive grant environment prevents agencies from sharing opportunities, leading to a “black hole of giving” where donors don’t know where their dollars go during a crisis.

Deep Dive: Conversation focused on breaking complex issues like housing into “morsel-sized” goals—for example, it’s easier to get a donor to give $10 for food than to solve homelessness. The group asked: “Do we commit that everyone needs a meal and a place to live? If so, let our funding follow that commitment.”

Decided Action: Launch a communications hub led by volunteers to coordinate shared messaging and engage the United Way to lead regional funding coordination, requiring collaboration as a prerequisite for grants.

The Focus: Deep “silos” between the City, County, and various state departments (DPI, DCF) cause families to fall through the cracks between the “birth-to-three” stage and kindergarten.

Deep Dive: Participants highlighted that HIPAA regulations often create barriers between providers. A significant “Aha!” was that parents are now often more worried about affording daycare than actually finding it, reflecting a shift in the regional economic crisis.

Decided Action: Initiate a Resource Mapping project for early childhood providers and advocate for subsidized care for families working non-traditional, non-9-to-5 hours.

The Focus: Many young adults lack basic “life skills” education, such as understanding a lease or a mortgage, which leads to housing instability later in life.

Deep Dive: The group argued that prevention is hard to market compared to crisis response. They discussed the need for “safe spaces” where community members can join and ask “dumb questions” about finances without judgment.

Decided Action: Increase collaboration between Public Health and local high schools to integrate life-skills education and create accessible venues for housing and financial literacy.

The Focus: For those in recovery or with severe anxiety, “the door” itself is a barrier. Formal county government settings can increase anxiety, preventing people from seeking help.

Deep Dive: The group explored how Peer Support Specialists differ from social workers: peers build rapport quickly through shared lived experience and can meet people in their homes rather than a clinical office.

Decided Action: Implement a Peer Mentoring Program using past participants to act as guides and create a Collective Flow Chart shared between agencies to ensure “wrap-around” support for every client.

The Focus: There is a sharp drop in service engagement the moment an immediate crisis (like a housing or food emergency) is resolved, yet this is when stability work actually begins.

Deep Dive: The group discussed how stigma creates a barrier to long-term recovery and highlighted that “crisis resolution does not equal stability.” They emphasized that hope and structure are just as vital as direct aid.

Decided Action: Shift community systems from “crisis response” to “stability support” by strengthening peer mentoring models that maintain connection after the initial emergency has passed.

The Focus: It is difficult to get a diverse range of organizations involved in policy advocacy beyond one-time, reactionary events.

Deep Dive: The group realized that healthcare and childcare are bipartisan “bridge” topics that affect every industry in the region. By gathering typically un-united groups to lobby together, their voice becomes exponentially more powerful.

Decided Action: Replicate the “Eau Claire Vision” model to bring organizations together for collective lobbying and implement “legislative speed dating” and regular local lobby days.

The Focus: There is a critical need for CHWs who act more like “life coaches” than clinical providers, teaching families self-sufficiency so they eventually succeed without the system.

Deep Dive: A “lightbulb moment” occurred when a local health leader realized that a medical degree isn’t necessary for this type of vital coaching; passion and lived experience are the primary drivers.

Decided Action: Collaborate with UW-Stout on an educational pathway (apprenticeships and certifications) to credential more regional workers and establish a CHW Alliance to share best practices.

The Focus: “Industry jargon” (like credit score or utility terminology) and clinical appointment models often shut out and stigmatize the very people receiving services.

Deep Dive: The group discussed a “Qualification Trap” where local poverty lines are set so that families earn too much for help but too little to survive. They also noted the profound loneliness that often hits a person immediately after they are successfully housed and the organic strength found in unhoused communities that clinical models fail to replicate.

Decided Action: Standardize Paid Compensation for experts with lived experience, launch a Centralized Housing Registry (modeled after Minnesota’s system), and transition toward a “Village Model” of organic, neighborhood-level mentorship

The Focus: Supporting veterans requires compassionate navigation through complex, fluid eligibility rules across VA, CVSO, and state systems.

Deep Dive: There is significant confusion between VA and county services, leading to misdirected referrals. A critical “Aha!” moment focused on the eligibility gap: when veterans are deemed ineligible for federal VA services, they are often incorrectly removed from systems that could still connect them to state-level supports. Furthermore, case managers face extreme workforce strain and an emotional toll as they manage high caseloads with rising veteran homelessness.

Decided Action: Coordinate regional veteran tracking systems to better integrate transient veteran data across Western Wisconsin and the Minneapolis VA networks.

The Focus: A unified platform is necessary to facilitate “closed-loop referrals,” ensuring client outcomes are tracked and reducing the trauma of people having to repeat their stories to multiple agencies.

Deep Dive: Current primary users include Home for Good, CC We Adapt, and EC Sober Living. The platform allows for secure messaging and electronic Release of Information (ROI). However, the system’s value is entirely dependent on widespread regional adoption to create a robust resource database.

Decided Action: Onboard more local partners and use the platform to identify and track specific service gaps in real-time.